Jones Is 25th City Council Member Convicted Since 1972

It's an amazing roster: the list of Chicago aldermen nailed for official corruption over the last 26 years.

Ald. Virgil Jones' quick conviction Thursday after less than two hours of jury deliberation made him the 25th current or former member of the City Council convicted of violating the public trust while supposedly representing the interests of Chicago's citizens. And one more has charges pending, though he is unlikely to go to trial because of ill health. For federal prosecutors, it has been like shooting fish in a barrel.

Nearly all the convictions have involved bribery of one sort or another, often in connection with the rezoning of property. Nearly always, the aldermen have been on the taking end. The one exception was Stanley Zydlo, who was nabbed for being the briber instead of the bribee.

Bribes have been paid in checks and cash. Some of the schemes, though, were more complex, such as Thomas Keane's use of his inside knowledge as Mayor Richard J. Daley's right-hand man to snap up thousands of pieces of property and resell them to various government agencies at overblown prices.

Wallace Davis Jr. may have set the standard for venality. He extorted $11,000 from his niece.

Another longtime Chicago tradition--placing political cronies or relatives in "ghost" jobs that required little if any work--landed other aldermen in prison.

Republicans, whose party has long been the Little Engine That Couldn't in Chicago, have nonetheless been relatively well-represented among the convicted, despite their tiny numbers in the council.

Even so-called reformers have been caught in wrongdoing, most recently Lawrence Bloom, who surprised supporters in December by pleading guilty to a tax charge, admitting he took $14,000 in bribes from a notoriously corrupt contractor.

The corruption dragnet, which has included such special federal investigations as Operation Incubator, Operation Haunted Hall, Operation Silver Shovel, Operation Gambat and Operation Greylord, has touched 21 of the city's 50 wards.

After serving their prison sentences, some former aldermen have faded away, but not all. Some who made their livings as attorneys before going to the Big House have swaggered back into court to seek a return of their licenses to practice law--and got them. A couple of ex-con aldermen have tried to convince voters that they should get their City Council seats back.

None has won. Yet.

Here is the list of shame:

CONVICTED

- Fred Hubbard (2nd) pleaded guilty in 1972 to embezzling nearly $100,000 from a federally funded jobs program he had headed. After serving all but 10 weeks of a 2-year prison term, he ended up driving a cab. Later, Hubbard used a false name, Andrew Thomas, to land a job as a substitute teacher in the Chicago Public Schools. The ruse was discovered in 1986 when Hubbard, then 57, was accused of propositioning a 13-year-old girl at a grade school. In recent years, he was back behind the wheel of a taxi, but he lost that livelihood in 1991 when his driver's license was suspended.

- Joseph Jambrone (28th) was convicted in 1973 of accepting payoffs of $4,000 and $1,000 in return for his support for zoning changes in his ward. He died in 1974 while appealing his conviction.

- Casimir Staszcuk (13th), a Republican, was convicted in 1973 of accepting three bribes, totaling $9,000, to back zoning changes in his ward. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

- Joseph Potempa (23rd), another Republican, pleaded guilty in 1973 to accepting a $3,000 bribe for a zoning change and failing to report $9,000 in bribes in two rezoning cases on income-tax returns. Potempa, who was bribed by the same real estate investor as Staszcuk, was sentenced to serve a year and a day in prison. He died in November 1995.

- Frank Kuta (23rd), who replaced Potempa in the council, was convicted in 1974 of accepting a $1,500 bribe on a zoning case and sentenced to 6 months in prison. In 1981, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Kuta had, "by clear and convincing evidence, established his rehabilitation" and could get his law license back--as soon as he gave the city $1,500 for the bribe money he had extorted. He paid the city and opened a law office on the Southwest Side.

- Thomas Keane (31st), Mayor Richard J. Daley's floor leader and the man often described as the second-most powerful figure in the city, was convicted in 1974 of mail fraud and conspiracy for using his inside knowledge and influence to further a scheme to buy nearly 1,900 parcels of tax-delinquent property and sell them to various government agencies at inflated prices. Keane, who regained his license to practice law after serving 22 months in prison, died in 1996 at age 90.